This invention relates to spice racks and in particular to a spice rack providing improved kitchen space utilization.
Convenient access to cooking spices can greatly simplify the preparation of many recipes. Countertop spice racks can display multiple spice containers within easy reach, but suffer from the drawback of using scarce counter space and exposing the spices to light and heat which may decrease their life. For this reason, many cooks store spices within the kitchen cabinets above the counters. Such cabinets provide ample storage space but can make it difficult to view and access spice containers to the extent that the frontmost spice containers block those at the rear. Alternatively, positioning the spices all to the front of the shelves, in front of other kitchen sundries, risks dislodging the spice containers when the larger objects are removed.
For these reasons, it is known to mount spice racks on the interior face of the cabinet doors themselves. When the doors are opened, the spices are readily visible in the single plane of the door. Spice racks of this kind are taught, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,122,336 to Barry issued Jun. 28, 1938.
The space available on the inside of a cabinet door is limited by the need to prevent interference between the spice rack on the door and the shelves and items on the shelves. For this reason the spice racks must be generally positioned in areas away from the shelves and the items on the shelves must be positioned away from the shelf edges to provide room for the spice rack when the door closes.
Retaining the spice containers in the door-mounted spice racks when the cabinet door is opened is normally provided by “guardrails” on the shelves attached to the cabinet door. These guardrails can obscure the spice containers and their labels and require a lifting of the spices out of the shelves necessitating ample spacing between the spice racks for this movement.
Such shelf systems practically have limited storage capability and require the use of multiple cabinet doors if large numbers of spices are to be stored, an approach which reduces the ability to access the spices easily.